Sometimes all of us that work here at the East Coast office of SuicideGirls sit around wondering what we could bring to the SG table. Of course the left coast is in charge of the girls and just about everything while, we here are in the cold trying to showcase artists and works that you might not find in your latest issue of Entertainment Weekly. Thats what brought me to the short story collection, Beautiful Girls.

I cant think of too many modern short story writers whose work can be described as lyrical but that is an adjective that must be applied to Beth Ann Baumans book.

Beautiful Girls has eight wonderful stories in it ranging from "True," which is about an exquisitely shy teenage girl who tries to fathom the hidden secrets of beauty from a boy whos "the prettiest person in the entire school" to the title story where voracious girls who long for love and admiration compete in a town pageant.

Daniel Robert Epstein: How autobiographical are the stories in Beautiful Girls?

Beth Ann Bauman: I think they are fictional stories in the truest sense but I certainly drew from my life.

DRE: Was there any one that you felt was closer to you?

BAB: I think the story that is closest to me emotionally would be [the title story] Beautiful Girls.

DRE: What was special about that?

BAB: I think the characters sense of longing and her inability to be able to have whats available to her is something that I identified with at that age.

DRE: Wash, Rinse, Spin was based on the death of your father.

BAB: Yes that one was pretty emotionally autobiographical although the story itself was a fictional story.

DRE: Over what period of time did you write these stories?

BAB: I did them in a period of eight years.

DRE: How tough was it to write them?

BAB: Wash, Rinse, Spin was actually fun to write. My dad was in the hospital for an extended period of time and then he died of lung cancer. So there were a lot of similarities to the story. I didnt think I would ever write about it because it was just so awful. Probably a year later I started thinking about when he was sick. I was living in a city, working and trying to juggle my schedule to go see him in New Jersey. I was just super busy. Whenever it was time to do my laundry I would feel out of control and I could never figure out any time to do it. But once I had done it I felt more in control again. I was thinking about that and I thought that was really weird. Thats what I started with; laundry, and I let it develop from there. As far as the stories being too emotional for me to write about, that wasnt an issue for me because I try to start with something that is pretty removed from me or I try to make the characters really unique and specific so I am really dealing with a character. Of course, parts of yourself always come out in stories but I was dealing with characters that became real to me as entities.

DRE: Was there any reason there was only one story [Stew] written from a males point of view?

BAB: When I first started writing the collection I was just writing stories that were interesting to me and they just happened to be about women. But then when I started working on Stew I found that its not really that different to write about girls or boys and men or women. I think the human heart is more similar than different.

DRE: Did you originally write it as a young girl?

BAB: I dont quite remember. I think it probably surprised me that I was writing about a boy but it just felt right.

DRE: What made you decide to do a short story collection rather than a novel?

BAB: I think stories seem to seize me. The material presents itself that way. I dont know about a novel. I guess its possible I will start writing something that will seem like a larger piece. At this point there is no freaking money in short stories but I love them.

DRE: Did you write more stories that didnt make it into the book?

BAB: I did but some of them didnt work thematically with the rest of them and some just werent good enough. My agent and I really worked hard to make sure that the stories in the collection complemented each other and were solid.

DRE: Did the name for the collection seem to fit?

BAB: Yeah, I feel like I got really lucky with that because that story was originally called Instincts of the Cuckoo and it had this Darwinian stuff in there that felt imposed on the material. I was determined to make those cuckoo birds work but it didnt. So I finally I just scrapped all that stuff. Then I wrote this scene where the mother of the three girls was saying, You have to go down into the basement and get rid of that stink. Then the youngest girl suddenly says, Were not going there. Were beautiful girls. A light went off in my head and I felt it was the right title for the story. Then as I was working I felt it was the right title for the book. This is a book about girls and women; their secret lives and all thats beautiful and not so beautiful about them. So it really did seem to be the right title for the book.

DRE: I think Eden is my favorite story. [Eve and Adam meet on a cruise ship while vacationing with their respective mothers.]

BAB: Really?

DRE: But Im not sure why. It seemed inspired all the way through it. Like you felt it was fun to take a small inspiration and move it into this different thing. How did that one come about?

BAB: That was one of the last stories I wrote for the collection. It actually gave me some trouble. I first wrote Eden as a three-page story then I decided to make it into a fuller story because there were things that were undeveloped. I think I just fooled around with the whole biblical Adam and Eve story. She is searching for more in her life specifically a relationship. Shes pursuing this guy and she sees him as the ultimate guy but hes not. She comes to realize that shes gotten really stuck on him and now has to deal with trying to get past it. Does that make sense?

DRE: Definitely.

The sex and sexy stuff in the stories, how hard is that to do?

BAB: Writing about good sex is really boring so it has to be bad or at least complicated for it to be interesting. I guess there are some sex scenes that are really good and sexy but usually the bad sex is more compelling.

DRE: I read that in 1994, you took a writing workshop with the novelist Michael Cunningham. How did that happen?

BAB: The Writers Community is this wonderful national organization. They offer partially funded master level classes in fiction and poetry. Its really great because the teachers are mid-career poets and fiction writers. The students can apply for the class and if you get chosen you only pay a really small fee because its subsidized. I did three of those workshops and the people in the classes were really talented.

DRE: What was it like working with Michael Cunningham?

BAB: Hes great. Hes super smart, really funny and the greatest thing about him is that he was so accessible and really cared. When he gave us comments, they were two pages single-spaced typed comments.

DRE: Was he someone that was an influence on you before the workshop?

BAB: The only story I had read was the one he had in Best American called White Angel and then once I was in the workshop I went and read his novels.

DRE: What are your influences?

BAB: Joy Williams the short story writer, Flannery OConnor and Jane Bowles, do you know who she is?

DRE: She was married to Paul Bowles.

BAB: Yes but shes the only Bowles worth reading. Raymond Carver as well.

DRE: What are you writing now?

BAB: Im fooling around with some stories but nothing concrete. Im still in the post publication freak out.

DRE: What I also liked about the book is that there is no story of a woman being abused. Was that on purpose?

BAB: It wasnt a conscious decision but it wasnt part of my thinking.

DRE: Have you always been able to inject humor into your work?

BAB: I guess the way that I work is to generate some material then put it aside. Then when I pick it up again I will look at it with fresh eyes. Because its such an intuitive process for me I will feel for where the energy is then I will see what is undeveloped and use that as a reentry point. The stuff that feels cold will get tossed. But Im always just following the story and where the energy is. Its sort of a partnership between the work and me. Sometimes I will write a story and be surprised and wonder where it came from. But I guess Im more of a co-pilot. The material guides me.